Inkjet printers are now very common and affordable and allow one to obtain decent print quality. They are used in home printing, office printing and commercial printing. The growth of inkjet printing is the result of a number of factors including reductions in cost of inkjet printers and improvements in print resolution and overall print quality. A continued demand in inkjet printing has resulted in the need to produce images of high quality, high permanence and high durability while maintaining a reasonable cost. Inkjet printing is also a popular method of non-contact printing on a broad selection of substrates to produce images comprising a variety of colors.
As expanded colors have become available, inkjet printers have found a role in producing decorative appearances for printed images for home and office decorative printing as well as commercial decorative printing. One such decorative appearance is metallic appearance or reflectivity. For example, for some users a gold appearance is desirable. However, the hue of gold that is acceptable or desirable differs by culture and geography. For example, people of Ancient Greece preferred the color of an alloy of gold and silver, which exhibited a whitish/greenish coloration and was referred to as “white gold.” People of the Far East and Indian Subcontinent prefer their gold to be of reddish hue and achieve it by mixing gold with some amounts of copper (the more copper in the alloy—the more reddish the gold).
Aqueous (water-based) inkjet inks that can yield images that have one or more of various hues of a metallic luster such as gold and copper, for example, are desirable.